The invention relates generally to systems for supplying purified water to a consumer or user thereof and more particularly to methods and apparatus for treating an incoming water supply, as from a municipal supplier, to consistently and reliably provide high quality purified water.
Commercial and industrial installations that require quantities of consistently highly pure water have in recent years looked towards reverse-osmosis (RO) purification, together with ancillary treatment steps, to provide such a product from municipal or other water supplies that may vary from time to time in quality. In order to facilitate servicing of such systems, perhaps by personnel who are not mechanically trained and who do not carry sophisticated tools, what has become known as the canister system has been developed, some of which systems employ multiple canisters. Examples of such multi-canister systems are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,143,601, 5,354,464 and 6,027,644, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference. Such systems may include two, three or four canisters that contain, in addition to a reverse-osmosis separation/purification element, a prefiltering element to remove sediment, particulate or other such materials, a postfilter cartridge containing activated charcoal, carbon or the like to remove off-tastes and perhaps an optional further UV cartridge that might be sequenced either before or after the carbon postfilter.
Although the embodiments illustrated in these patents demonstrate the basic concept of employing multi-canister manifold arrangements for the objective of producing a highly pure water stream from a municipal or other source of varying quality, they are considered to be only a starting point for facilitating the supply of a product stream of water of consistently high purity in a reliable manner that will obviate or minimize down-time should unforeseen difficulties arise.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide methods and apparatus for reliably supplying purified water on a consistent basis from a municipal or other water supply that might vary in quality.
It is another object of the invention to provide apparatus of this type that is highly versatile in the ability to combine components to create systems for a wide variety of applications ranging from household use to sophisticated industrial installations.
It is a still further object of the invention to provide apparatus of this type which can readily be serviced by relatively mechanically unskilled service personnel when needed to continue the reliable supply of consistently highly pure water.
It is a further object of the invention to provide systems of this type that can be remotely monitored, on an automatic or semiautomatic basis, in order to provide a proactive arrangement for detecting potential trouble spots in advance and replacing one or more canisters prior to having the quality of the output stream fall below the desired standard.
Very basically, the invention provides a system for providing purified water using a plurality of individual modules, each of which modules includes a separable head and canister, with the modules being joined one to another via these heads to create a composite manifold. The heads and canisters are of a substantially identical construction, respectively, and through the employment of adaptors incorporated within each canister, the composite canisters are individualized to house a wide variety of units. By xe2x80x9cpurified waterxe2x80x9d for purposes of this application is meant water that has been treated in any way so as to improve its quality, for example by filtering, by softening, by removal of dissolved solids with semipermeable membranes, e.g. RO membranes, etc.
In one particular aspect, the invention provides a system for providing purified water to a point of use (POU) from a municipal water source or the like, which system comprises a plurality of individual modules each of which includes a separable head and a canister, each of said heads having liquid inlet and outlet passageways, and means joining said heads of said plurality of modules one to another to create a composite manifold, said heads being of substantially identical construction and said canisters being of substantially identical construction so that such can be inexpensively manufactured, said canisters being hollow and having at least two interengaging sections including an upper section which mates with said head and a lower section, said hollow canisters containing different operating units, with at least one of said units being a pump and another being a purification unit, said upper section of each of said canisters containing an adaptor that creates a desired liquid flow arrangement between said inlet and outlet passageways in said head and the respective operating unit in said canister, and said modules in said composite manifold being interconnected for liquid flow between adjacent modules and being arranged so that said module containing said pump is upstream of said module containing said purification unit, whereby any canister of any module, including that containing said pump, can be easily and quickly replaced with a substitute.
In another particular aspect, the invention provides a system for providing purified water to a point of use (POU) from a municipal water source or the like, which system comprises a plurality of individual modules, each of which includes a separable head and a canister, each said head having liquid inlet and outlet passageways, means joining said heads of said plurality of modules one to another to create a composite manifold, said modules containing different operating units with said canister of one module containing a pump and drive motor and another said canister containing a main purification unit that includes a spirally wound crossflow reverse osmosis (RO) membrane element having a spiral feed passageway for feed flow axially therethrough, which element produces a product water stream and a concentrate stream, an auxiliary water purification device designed to operate on municipal water pressure to produce a stream of purified water, a storage tank for storing purified water from said main purification unit when more purified water is being produced than is being removed from the system at the POU, conduit means for delivering purified water from the outlet passageway in the head of said purification unit module to said storage tank, a reject conduit leading to drain which is connected to carry at least some of the concentrate stream from the RO element, means for determining when said storage tank is substantially full, an inflow conduit network for supplying water from the source to the module containing said pump and to said auxiliary purification device, a flush conduit connecting a purified water outlet from said auxiliary purification device to an inlet passageway in the head of the module containing the main purification unit, and a control unit interconnected with said determining means and said pump drive motor, which control unit is designed to, upon receipt of a signal from said determining means that said tank is full, halt operation of said pump motor, and initiate flow of water from said source to said auxiliary purification device, whereby purified water from said auxiliary purification device flows through said flush conduit and axially through said spirally wound membrane element to flush the feed passageways.
In yet another particular aspect, the invention provides a system for providing purified water to a point of use (POU) from a municipal water source or the like, which system comprises a pump and drive motor which are connected to supply water from such source to a main purification unit that includes a spirally wound crossflow reverse osmosis (RO) membrane element having a spiral feed passageway for feed flow axially therethrough, which element produces a product water stream and a concentrate stream, an auxiliary water purification device designed to operate on municipal water pressure to produce a stream of purified water, a storage tank for storing purified water from said main purification unit when more purified water is being produced than is being removed from the system at the POU, product conduit means for delivering purified water from said main purification module to said storage tank and to said POU, means for determining when said storage tank is substantially full, and control means for halting operation of said pump motor and initiating flow of water from said source to said auxiliary purification device upon such determination, whereby purified water from said auxiliary purification device is then caused to flow axially through said spirally wound membrane element to flush the feed passageway therein.